


Cultivation.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Highlander: The Series, Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Author's Favorite, Community: contrelamontre, Crossover, Fusion, Podfic Available, The Gathering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-13
Updated: 2008-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-03 00:52:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the time of the Gathering, with a rift in time and space running through Cardiff, Methos takes a student.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cultivation.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the contrelamontre thirty-five minute brutality challenge.

Here at the end of the world, Ianto Jones makes coffee.

His cousin, who makes no pretense of being his cousin at all, has come back to stay. He sleeps on his couch, all limbs and no torso, it seems so very often, until Ianto walks into the room suddenly and watches Cousin Adam jump six feet straight up into the air.

"Don't do that when I'm sleeping," Adam orders him, then pulls him close for a kiss and a deep look into his eyes. "Enjoy work."

Adam had found him, sometime long ago, when he was a child only discovering the word adoption, and refound him, later, and again, and again, but now he's around, always, always around, hovering. Ianto tells him about Jack, tells him about the bodies. Adam tells him how to cut them up, how to dismember and destroy, how to think of it all, all of humanity, as bodies he will simply one day have to be rid of.

Here at the end of the world, Ianto Jones knows where all the bodies are buried. He should. He stands there, twice a week by now, in the cold, digging into the dirt, with Adam standing by, always close now, always just beyond the bounds of sensing. He buries bits and pieces. Never whole bodies, because that would be noticed, and he keeps, needs to keep, has been ordered to keep, will never rid from his mind that list that he keeps of bodies and graves and forgotten lives shut up in the boxes in the morgue.

But he takes.

This is what Adam likes about him.

Ianto takes small things. Ears, mostly. He once took the most perfect lips he had ever seen. But that had been horrible, a sight burned into his nightmares, and so he never has again. But ears. Ears are simple. Simply his for the taking.

Trophies, Adam calls them. Trophies. As if Ianto himself had killed them. As if Ianto was anything more than the clean up. As if Ianto mattered.

He started with wedding rings. He has a collection in his sock drawer and he will look at them, sometimes, and Adam will kiss the back of his neck and then dig his teeth in and he will tell Ianto about lives he once lived. Adam will wrap his arms around Ianto's waist and Ianto will dig his fingers through the promises of dead men, and he will think, there was once a time when I did not love this.

Here at the end of the world, Adam says, "call me Methos", but Ianto never does, because that name is old in his mouth, like names of dead myths that Jack references as he does, and Adam is alive in his arms, not dust in the ground, and so Ianto keeps the name close, knows it means something, knows it matters, matters the way Jack matters in Adam's plans, matters the way this all fits together, the rift, Cardiff, Torchwood, the Watchers and Jack Harkness. One day Adam will tell him how. One day Adam will take him to an alleyway and he will bring him before a man, kneeling in pain on the ground, and he will say, strike, and Ianto will kill and then it will all begin.

Adam says, you must learn to serve before you yourself may rule.

After Ianto sees Adam take a Quickening, he begins to understand. And when Adam slams him into a wall, the gravel tearing at his suit, his nails digging for purchase, and Adam growling strange languages into his ear, he is grateful he is not yet master of his fate, grateful to be the student of the great Methos, and he dies as he comes, with Adam's knife through his temple.

Here at the end of the world, Ianto watches, hiding in plain sight, as the others wander about their ordinary lives. He fills their coffee cups. He fetches them dinner. He buries bodies and retcons innocents and he, himself, not the others, bears witness to the ruined lives. He, himself, knows the tragedies they create by their very existence. He, himself, and no one else.

Jack once said, if we weren't here, it would be worse, and he had given Ianto something to drink and he had treated him like Adam once did, when he was young and thought he wanted to be protected. And Ianto had inclined his head and smiled a secret smile and Jack had taken him home to Adam and said, stop fucking around with him and give him a sword.

Adam and Jack fought, once, a long time ago, but they never speak of it now, and when Ianto walks in on them sparring one day, Jack throws him a sword and tells Adam, do it or I will. And Adam agrees, bowing at the shoulders, and hands off his student to another.

Here at the end of the world, Ianto Jones is surviving the Gathering.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cultivation [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/367723) by [tinypinkmouse_podfic (tinypinkmouse)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinypinkmouse/pseuds/tinypinkmouse_podfic)




End file.
